It is known in existing prior art that a coronary artery tree is a system of arteries that supply oxygen and nutrient-rich blood to the muscle. Several medical procedures are carried out to conduct diagnostics in treating cardiac events.
Imaging systems such as angiograms have been used for some time to assist surgeons in viewing the coronary artery tree. U.S. Pat. No. 7,113,623 B2 describes a method for display and analysis of moving arterial tree structures. The document describes a method of visualizing and analyzing a three dimensional representation of a moving vascular tree structure. The method shows a correspondence between sequences of imaging frames. However, this method requires multiple views of the angiogram in order to reconstruct an image.
Most of the known prior art use a biplane approach to produce 3 dimensional reconstruction. Two views are used to construct the 3 dimensional structure. Not all problems require a biplane approach. This is because biplane requires a longer time for calculations and a higher synchronization is required between two views to achieve acceptable reconstruction.
Other aspects involve a pair of time varying arteriographic image sequences to reconstruct a three dimensional representation of the vascular tree structure as it moves through a cardiac cycle. Other approaches involve reconstructing from a rotational digital subtraction angiogram sequences. Most of the above mentioned solutions tend to be rather time consuming and may not be appropriate for use during the course of surgery as information is required on an urgent basis at that time.
Therefore, there is a need for producing a solution that reconstructs medical images for surgeons during the course of surgery in an almost realtime situation to assist surgeons in planning.